


sharper than a serpent’s tooth

by village_skeptic



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Catharsis, Children, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Mothers and Daughters, Parents, episode tag - 1x13, fathers and sons, these two have more baggage than a suitcase factory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 16:55:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11017602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/village_skeptic/pseuds/village_skeptic
Summary: During the finale, what happened between Betty’s confrontation of her mother and Alice’s confession to her daughter?Or: Alice and FP finally clear the air.





	sharper than a serpent’s tooth

All she needs is a minute to calm down, she tells herself.

 

Alice Cooper is sitting in the front seat of her car, parked in her own driveway, smoking the second cigarette from the pack she keeps stashed in the back of the center console for emergencies. Just a few minutes, and she’ll have herself under control.

She closes her eyes, takes a shuddering breath. Alice had spent the last 23 years putting up protective barriers between herself and the biggest regret of her life. She had been more or less successful – and if she did something a bit strange occasionally, like politely decline to hold Hal’s cousin’s newborn baby boy, or stay in bed ( _food poisoning, a touch of the flu_ ) on the same day in March each and every year, who was anyone else to judge her? She was fine. Her family was fine. It was all for the best and all in the past, all practically past remembering.

 

And then, not twenty minutes ago, Betty had leaned across the kitchen island and scraped all those layers of protective covering away with a few venomous words.

 

She had been horrified – and also, even then, through her rising rage and panic, a little bit proud. Her daughter had the makings of a very good investigative journalist: not only sensing where a story was buried, but then waiting for the right moment to follow up on the lead, to press the source, to get them to reveal more than they had intended to say. And she was really finding her voice as a writer – her latest piece certainly proved that.

What her daughter needed to find now, though, was her sense of self-preservation. Because right now it seems to Alice as if Betty has lost her damn mind. Riverdale was already reeling from the news that one of its foremost businessmen had killed himself before he could be publicly exposed as a filicidal drug smuggler. Publishing an exposé that defended the Serpents and excoriated practically everybody else in town was beyond foolish – it was positively reckless.

 

Alice realizes that she is glaring at her copy of Betty’s article, still resting in the seat beside her atop a stack of Register papers from the other day. She is staring at her daughter’s neat prose, but she is imagining hateful epithets daubed in bright red across a row of white lockers. She is seeing Betty hung in effigy. She replays again in her mind the look of utter contempt on her youngest daughter’s face as she accused Alice of being afraid of the truth; of keeping secrets that would destroy their family. And, casting back even further, she remembers the look of horror on Hal’s face as she blurts out the news, the straps on her Homecoming shoes cutting into her newly swollen ankles.

She bites her lip, grits her teeth, takes a drag on the cigarette. A minute or two more, and she would be fine.

Then she looks up to see Polly peering worriedly out through the living room window. One hand comes up nervously, unconsciously, to stroke the swell of her belly. Watching her, Alice feels the panic well up in her chest. She remembers the feel of that shape under her own clothing, the vulnerability and the responsibility and the crushing loneliness of it all, and she knows that she is _not_ fine, not by a long shot.

 

She flicks the cigarette out the window with shaking hands, not bothering to see where it lands; and then jams the keys in the ignition, guns the engine, peels out of the driveway without checking her mirrors ( _reckless Alice_ ) and floors it out of their quiet suburban neighborhood.

 

 

 

He is halfway through his third re-read of the comic book when Keller pokes his nose through the door. “Got another visitor for you, FP.”

_Christ, who now?_

So far he thinks the worst part of being locked up is that everyone knows exactly where to find him when they decide they want to talk. He’s not looking forward to the state penitentiary, but at least there he won’t have to keep having awkward conversations about the future with everyone from the public defender to Fred Andrews’ giant ginger son. At least there, there will be no more watching his own son’s lips press into a cynical line, listening as Keller presses for information that he doesn’t have and wouldn’t give to him anyway.

Jughead’s visits are a kind of prickly comfort. They reassure him that his boy is alive and safe, and not like the other boy, the one on the floor in the basement of the Whyte Wyrm. They prove that the dream he keeps waking from, of Clifford Blossom’s cold smile and a grey knit beanie soaked in blood – is just that, a terrible vision that will never come to pass.

But the way that Jughead looks at him, with those carefully blank features that occasionally slip to show disappointment and gratitude, anger and worry and embarrassment and frustrated love for his fuck-up of a father – well. FP loves his son, loves him with an impotent fierceness that is occasionally baffling in its intensity, but that’s never seemed to stop him from hurting Jughead anyway, mostly by accident. He figures that it might be better for them both for him to love Jughead from a distance.

He hears high heels tapping on the concrete floor, glances up, and doesn’t even bother to stifle a groan. And now apparently, as if things weren’t bad enough, he will be forced to reckon with Alice Cooper.

 

He looks her up and down; can’t help the old habit. She’s perfectly groomed, as she has been every time he’s laid eyes on her for the past twenty years. He can tell from the set of her jaw that she’s furious, too, which – well, same thing, practically. They haven’t brought out the best in each other for quite some time.

 

She stalks across the small room, thrusts a sheet of paper through the bars. Queries, her voice tight with anger: “Are you responsible for this?”

 

He has no idea what “this” could possibly be, but for a split second, FP is tempted to just say yes. Just on the off chance that it would somehow forestall whatever shrill tirade he’s sure is coming.

Then again, he thinks, he’s about had his fill of confessing to things that he hasn’t done. An echo of the sick fear and shame he felt answering Keller’s questions about the murder ( _he would have admitted to anything then; anything_ ) rolls over him suddenly, and a spark of his own anger leaps to match the steady blaze he sees burning in her eyes.

 

“Alice, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Read it,” she snaps.

 He’s on the verge of refusing – who is she to order him around? – when he sees his own name at the top of the paper: “FP JONES INNOCENT.”

He grabs the paper from her and skims the text. It’s a short essay – no, a newspaper article. Phrases pop out at him: “FP Jones, acquitted of murder charges…being strong-armed by Sheriff Keller to name names…return to McCarthy-era tactics…an investigation mishandled at every turn…the facts have never been more important.”

And the byline - Betty Cooper. _Of course. That impossible girl_. He knows that Alice is watching him like a hawk, ready to gauge his reaction, but he still can’t help but smile, remembering Betty standing in Fred’s office, those big green eyes pleading with him to come to the party she had planned for Jughead.

 

“Man, you don’t quit, do you?” he had asked.

 “Rarely – if ever,” she had shot right back. Fire tempered with sweetness.

 

He looks up, meets Alice’s eyes. “I’m flattered. But no, I had nothing to do with this. This is all Betty.”

“Liar,” Alice immediately bites out. He notices her hands are shaking, recognizes the old signs of Alice on a tear, that perfect North Side matron’s mask dropping away to show the bitch goddess still there beneath.

 

His Alice, the one he had known years before, would say anything when she was hurting and wanted to hurt someone else. She would hurl vile insults and wild accusations, testing and twisting until she touched the right nerve. Neither relevance nor reality had anything to do with it; just her desire in the moment to see her own pain mirrored on someone else’s face.

He knows this, knows how she gets. Remembers, despite himself, the aftermath too. Tearful apologies followed by frantic coupling – on the floor of the van, in a back bedroom at someone’s kegger, up against the wall behind the blockhouse at the stadium. Any dark corner into which she could drag him in a pinch, anywhere that he could have her once her rage had evaporated, leaving only heat.

 

“You’re lying.” Alice, facing him, repeats deliberately. “Somehow you got to her, convinced her to write this and to publish it in the Blue and Gold. Did you have that little catamite of yours – Joaquin? – threaten her?”

He snorts. Now that was a wild swing, even for her. “Real nice, Alice. He’s sixteen, for God’s sake –”

She cuts him off. “Or maybe it was Jughead? Was it his idea to twist her arm into writing this, or did you have to convince him to do it? If the two of you think that you can use her good name as an asset that you can leverage in your sordid little drama, you are sadly mistaken.”

He knows what she is doing, and even so, it still works. Before he knows it, he’s up off the cot, across the narrow space and gripping the bars, inches from her face. Her hard eyes are locked on his, drinking in the spectacle of his anger.

“Leave my kid out of this, Alice,” he growls. “Do you really think that he would make her do _anything_ that she didn’t want to do? That I – hell, that anyone – could force her to write something like this? God knows that no one could force you to do anything at that age, and she is definitely _your daughter_ , Alice. And this -”

He smacks the article up against one of the bars. Alice doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink. The reverberation hums low, hanging in the air for a second or two. 

“This is pride. Not coercion. The two of them found the story that no one else wanted to find, and she’s not going to let it go. In fact, my bet is that she’s going to keep digging.”

Alice wheels around in frustration, hiding her face for a moment before leaning in again. “You’re goddamn right she’s going to ‘keep digging,’ FP.” Her air quotes are so vicious that he thinks for a second that she’s going to scratch his face.

 “You know where she’s digging now, FP? She’s digging at me.”

 

Alice’s lips are starting to tremble, and it feels to him like the moments before the sky opens up; a low, constant rumble and the air heavy with anticipation of the first fat drops, the first searing flash of light.

“She’s digging into the past, into things that she has no right to know about. And she wouldn’t have known where to dig if it wasn’t for you.” Her eyes are filling with tears now, and he can feel his own anger ebb suddenly, his own breath catch, as he realizes what she’s talking about.

“I don’t want her to know. I never, ever wanted her to find out. I have tried so hard –” Her voice trembles and cracks. “— _so hard_ , FP, to keep it from them. To forget about him.”

 

_Him_. _Allie’d had a boy, then._

 

“And then you come into my house, and you decide to start dropping hints about ‘a life or death situation’ - did you think that was funny, FP? Did you laugh to yourself later on, after you dropped our kids off at the damn Homecoming dance together?”

He swallows the lump in his throat. “Christ, Alice. No, I didn’t laugh. I wanted to hurt you, after you hurt me. Same as it ever was. But I shouldn’t have -”

 

She is crying now in earnest. “She told me – after the dance, after everything went to hell, Betty told me that Jughead was her family, that he was more her family than I was.” 

His heart is breaking for Alice – the desperate girl she had been, the aching woman in front of him – but even so, FP feels a rush of warmth in his chest. He had been right, then, to send Jug after Betty that night of the party, to encourage him to make it up with her.

“I tried so hard to keep them safe. After I lost him – no, after I _gave him away_ , I tried so hard to make it up with the girls. I wanted to make it right for them, to be a good mother for them, even if I couldn’t for him. And now Polly’s carrying a pair of fatherless children with a murderer’s blood, and Betty – Betty _hates me_.”

 

Alice is weeping, and he has no idea what to say to soothe her. _At least your kid never chose to be homeless rather than to live with you?_ The irony of her confessing her parental shortcomings to him, to FP Jones of all people, does not escape him. Especially considering their history together.

He doesn’t know how to make it better, so he decides to take a chance and maybe make it worse. It’s probably cruel, he knows, but he’s wondered for twenty-odd years, and when else was he going to get the chance to ask her?

 

“Allie.” The pet name spills out before he can stop it, and she raises surprised, tear-soaked eyes to meet his. _Damn it to hell_. But he forges on, clumsily. “The baby. Do you know – was he…?”

 

“Was he yours or Hal’s?”

 

All of a sudden, FP’s heart is hammering crazily in his chest. Why had he even asked her? Wasn’t it enough for him to know that he was a terrible father to two kids already?

 Alice shakes her head, tiredly. “No. I don’t know whose he was.” She gives a bitter little laugh – more of a hiccup, really, through the tears. “To tell you the truth, he was barely mine. I carried him for nine months and I held him for five minutes. And then the Sisters whisked him away, and I never saw him again. And I tried to forget, I try not to think about it! But every year, in the spring – and now Polly – and it’s just too fucking hard, FP, it’s just –”

And then she’s coming apart right there in front of him, clinging to the bars, chest heaving with big gulping sobs. All that pent-up grief and regret that she’d apparently been trying to choke down since they were eighteen, gushing forth at once. Because in all that time, no one, not even the man who shared her bed every damn night, had looked closely enough to see that it was eating away at her.

_Damn you, Hal Cooper_ , he thinks. And damn his own hurt teenage pride, for that matter, and then too many years of alcohol and bad choices and cowardice besides.

He feels helpless with the knowledge that there is nothing that he can say or do to fix this. And, stupidly, absurdly, he feels overwhelmed by the instinct to take her into his arms, to tangle his fingers in her hair and let her cry it out against him.

 

But he hasn’t touched her like that in twenty-odd years. And besides, there’s a cell door between them.

 

Instead, very carefully, he reaches out and fits his hands around hers. His broad palms cover her knuckles, bone-white as she clenches the bars; his thumbs stroke the soft skin of her wrists.  

He can give her this. He can wait until she pulls away.

 

 

 

Alice is exhausted from crying. She feels almost light-headed from the release of speaking her secret out loud. _Catharsis._ The warmth of FP’s hands on hers, the slow pressure of his thumbs moving in tiny circles, seems like the only thing tethering her to reality.

 

For all of his crudeness, his cocksure bravado, he had always been capable of a surprising tenderness. A soft look he reserved only for her, a quirk of that expressive mouth sharing a private joke between them. His hands, gentle on her when she needed them to be – like now. Still, after everything she’d said to him; after all these years.

She sees the same thing when she watches his son with her daughter. True, Jughead is slender and wiry, all delicate features and lean muscle in place of his father’s broad shoulders. And when he talks with Betty, he gestures with a writer’s long fingers instead of callused hands.

But when he touches Betty with those hands – one, courteous, on the small of her back as he ushers her ahead of him, or tangling those long fingers with hers as they walk home from school, or even in the handful of slightly less gentlemanly caresses she’s caught out of the corner of her eye in recent weeks…

Well. She could see his father in him; that was all.

She hadn’t been lying when she told Betty that she liked Jughead. She does, genuinely, somewhat to her surprise. He’s wry and well-read and clearly a survivor, and he looks at her daughter as if she hung the moon. And if he was anything other than a Jones from the South Side, she would count her blessings and hope they stayed together as long as they made each other happy.

But he is FP Jones’s boy, the son of a Serpent, and yes, she may have been afraid of the truth, but she is also very, very afraid for Betty.

 

She wipes her eyes, gently dislodging his hands in the process; takes a deep breath and looks up at him. “That article came out in the Blue and Gold this morning, and by lunchtime someone had written ‘Go to Hell, Serpent slut’ on her locker – in blood.”

 

If she hadn’t been watching for it, she would have missed it – that moment when all the gentleness in his eyes evaporated, replaced by the promise of violence.

 

_Good. He understood now._  

 

“Jesus, Allie. Those fucking --”

 He spins around and walks away from her, pacing across the tiny space. His arms are crossed tightly in front of him; she can see the tension in the line of his shoulders. 

 

Finally, he speaks. “Tell her I’m sorry. Please. Tell Betty that I said thank you, and that I’m sorry, and that it’s all right.”

He clears his throat, and she realizes to her surprise that he’s blinking back tears of his own.

“Whatever happens to me, it doesn’t matter, and Jughead, he’s going to be okay on the South Side, and she doesn’t need to worry about – digging. About putting herself in danger. Even for the truth.” 

 

The importance of Betty’s safety. The fact of FP’s irredeemability. These are the words that she came here to say and to hear, and yet - “What’s this about Jughead on the South Side?”

 

FP explains. About Social Services, and the nice foster family, and Southside High, and about Mayor McCoy and Sheriff Keller, and naming names, and other words that come together to describe the way that an iron fist looks inside a velvet glove.

Alice has been a small-town reporter long enough to know just how fast the odd, jury-rigged gears of bureaucracy can turn when a politician thinks their job is on the line. And she has also been a parent long enough to know how not being able to protect your kid from a cruel and capricious world feels. She sees that anguish flitting across FP’s face right now, as he fights for control of his emotions.

How perverse, how unfair it was. Some drug kingpin in Montreal, trying to extend his territory below the border, had no idea that his schemes had led to this: FP’s nervy, brilliant son was going to be thrown into the Snake Pit. His life in Riverdale would be an unmarked casualty of the War on Drugs, and of Mayor McCoy’s war on all corruption except her own.

 

“So you might not even have to worry too much, Alice. They’ll probably break up. At that age, going to school on the other side of town might as well be going to school on the fuckin’ moon.” He forces a short laugh, but there’s no humor in it, and his eyes won’t meet hers.

 

Alice closes her eyes and grits her teeth, thinking about the possible outcomes: what is safe and what is good; what is right and what is likely. Opens her eyes and looks at him, shakes her head, sighs.

 

“They might break up. They’re teenagers, after all. But have you seen them together? Have you met Betty? She wants him, FP. She loves him. You said it: she’s my daughter. She’s not going to let Jughead go without a fight.”

 

This time FP’s laugh sounds real, and he comes closer, leaning against the bars, looking down at her fondly. “You might be right at that, Alice. She’s a damn good writer, but I don’t think she knows what the phrase ‘give up’ means.”

 

It’s absurd, but Alice can’t help the swell of pride in her chest. It was the same feeling she used to get when old ladies in the supermarket gushed over how adorable and so well-behaved her two blonde little girls were, or later, when the other mothers congratulated her on Polly’s science fair project or Betty’s student council campaign. No matter how old they got, how completely her daughters’ accomplishments and personalities became their own, she still sometimes looked at them and felt overwhelmed by the fact of their existence and her role in it. They were such good girls, in spite of her own failings.

In this moment, she feels impossibly grateful to FP for recognizing how special Betty is. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to reflect that warmth back at him.

So, impulsively, she blurts: “When Hal fired me from the Register, it was Jughead who suggested that I come work with them at the Blue and Gold.”

FP quirks an eyebrow at her. “Hal kicked you off the Register?”

_Dammit, FP._ She presses her lips together. “It was a marital spat. Things have been – we’re completely reconciled now. My point is that Jughead – your son – is a good kid too.” 

He gives her a small smile; a real one, with his eyes crinkling up a little bit. She thinks he knows what she is trying to give him, and she breathes a little easier.

 

“He is. Don’t know how much of anything I had to do with it, though.” He pauses.

“You know, last time I saw you – outside Fred’s house – that was Jughead’s birthday party.”

“You threw _Jughead_ a _kegger_?!” she asks incredulously.

He rolls his eyes at her. “Yeah, right. I think Jughead would rather drink strychnine than do a keg stand. Wasn’t supposed to be that kind of party, until that hellkitten Cheryl Blossom got involved somehow. No, Alice, Jughead hates his birthday, and so I wasn’t going to be anywhere near him that day – except that Betty decided that I should be there.”

“Betty invited you?”

“Invited me? She about dragged me there.” FP grins. “First she called me on the phone – don’t ask me how the hell she got my number – and then when I turned her down, she ambushed me at the construction site. Made me promise to be there.”

 He leans in conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I was afraid what she’d do if I didn’t show up. Your daughter kinda scares the shit out of me, Alice.”

His eyes twinkle and his eyebrow quirks, and it’s too much for her. She starts laughing hysterically, because he is the _leader of a goddamn biker gang_ and Betty is a sixteen year old girl. And those facts notwithstanding, she knows that FP’s not completely joking when he says that Betty intimidates him a little.

 

Which made the request she was about to make rather ironic.

 

Somehow, Betty had successfully wedged solving a murder into her full slate of extracurricular activities. Now, against her mother’s advice, she had decided to take on City Hall, and most of their friends and neighbors besides.

Alice had fought her way out of the South Side, and raised her daughters on the North Side in a world that welcomed them. There, in that calm, serene world of tree-lined streets and blue-ribbon schools, she had taught them blithely to believe that there were absolutely no limits to what they could do if they put their minds to it. And now Betty was apparently prepared to test her mother’s words.

Having faced her hard green glare earlier that day, Alice knows that her daughter is a force to be reckoned with. But she is also still very, very young. Alice knows a few things about being young and reckless – has paid for that knowledge – even if she’s tried to forget it.

 She is proud of her daughter, and also afraid for her: the choices Betty seemed so ready to make, her disregard of the consequences that they could bring. Like FP, she might also be a little afraid of her, of that familiar streak of darkness that she recognizes in her daughter. Above all, she loves Betty – loves her so desperately.

 

There is nothing Alice wouldn’t do, no one she wouldn’t _ask_ , to keep her safe.

 

 

 

FP watches Alice wipe away tears – of laughter, this time, even though there’s a ragged edge to it – and his own face turns serious. He has to try to make her understand.

“Alice – that night, the party, after everything went to hell. I sent Jughead back after her. He was going to slink away, lick his wounds. Break up with her to save his own pride. I told him not to, that he had to man up and go take care of her. And yeah, Betty needed him, that was some of it – but...” He flexes his fingers helplessly, searching for the words.

“She’s good for him, Allie. He loves her, I think. And he is going to need that love, that _loyalty_ , soon. He closes his eyes; sets his jaw. “God knows I never seemed to be able to give it to him.”

 

He opens his eyes and Alice is looking at him, her face cold again. “No. But you gave it to the Serpents.”

 

He winces, accepts the blow, braces himself to start to explain, but Alice forestalls him with a gesture.

“Stop, FP. That’s an old story and we’ve dug into the past enough today.”

 

Alice pauses; FP can tell that she is clearly working up to something. “We both know that you’ll have the Serpents look after Jughead while you’re in here. I imagine it’ll be even easier for them now that he’s going to be living on the South Side.”

 

She is gazing at him with clear eyes and her voice is perfectly level when she continues. “I want you to have them look after Betty, too.”

 

Well, he hadn’t seen _that_ coming.

 

For a second, he considers a smart reply – _how now, prodigal daughter of the South Side, not feeling so confident about the forces of law and order these days?_

But no. He knows what it must have cost her to ask him that. And it’s her kid. _Their kids_. These two, at least, he can do something to protect.

“Of course.” The words come out gruffly. “They’ll keep an eye on her. On them.”

“Good.” Alice steps back from the bars, wipes her eyes, seems to recover her professional composure.

“The Register will need to cover your trial, of course, but we’ll do it tastefully. I promise you that there will be no tabloid editorializing–”

“Allie.” He interrupts her. “We’re not negotiating here. The Serpents take care of our own. As long as Betty and Jughead are together, she’s family.”

He grabs Betty’s article, long forgotten on the bed. “Hell, after this makes its way around the South Side, they’ll probably have her back forever. You know that Viper’s a sucker for a good editorial, especially when it’s written by a pretty blonde.”

She cracks a reluctant smile, but there is sincere gratitude in her eyes when they meet his own, and she murmurs “Thank you.” Then she reaches out, briefly touches his hand where it rests on the bars, and turns to go.

 

He probably should leave well enough alone, but when has he ever done that?

 

“You need to tell her, Alice.”

 

She turns back to face him. The light is dim now, and he can barely see her expression across the room, but he’s already said it, so better keep going.

“Maybe not all of it, not yet. But she will keep digging. And she should hear about her brother from you.”

He holds her eyes, and she nods, once, conceding the point. Good. He nods back, and then there is nothing more to say between them.

 

He sits down on the cot to watch her leave. The last rays of winter sunlight are slanting through the window, and in the blue light she looks very young. For a second, the years drop away, and it could have been any one of a thousand dawn partings between them.

But no. She is off home, back to Hal Cooper and her two daughters. And he is stuck here, probably looking at the next twenty years in prison.

He stares out the window a while, thinking. About the past and the future; about his son and Alice’s daughter; about Jellybean in Toledo and Alice’s son God knows where. And about fearless golden haired girls and the Jones boys that loved them.

He flips through a few pages of _Sabrina’s Chilling Adventures_ , looking but not seeing, before tossing it aside to pick up Betty’s article again. Lets “FP JONES INNOCENT” sink in for a minute, shaking his head, then reads it. Re-reads it. Really focuses on the words. It’s a short piece, but he imagines that he can see her influence in Jug’s manuscript.

Hell, maybe he’d ask Jughead to bring some back issues of the _Blue and Gold_ next time he came then. See what else his kid and Alice’s had been writing about together. He wasn’t a quick reader; but then again, he suddenly had a lot of time to fill. He might as well spend some of it getting to know his son.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written fanfiction since I was practically the Core Four’s age, but something about this crazy show grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. This fic is the result. Comments, kudos, and constructive feedback are always appreciated!
> 
> Title is from _King Lear_ : “How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!” I don’t think that either Betty or Jughead are thankless children, really. But can’t you hear Alice or Jughead quoting this in a more dramatic moment?


End file.
